Interesting SACD vs 24/192 observation

BlueFox

On page 136 of the July/August 2011 edition of the absolute sound there is an interview with "Bill Schnee, Engineer, Producer & Founder, Bravura Records". The first question is how did he decide to go back to live-direct recording, and why did he decide on 24-bit/192kHz format.

He answers that it started a few years ago with a suggestion from Doug Sax (The Mastering Lab) to try 192kHz instead of single-bit (DSD). He says:

"So for the next album I mixed, I used both Florian's 24-bit/192kHz converter and the Mietner single-bit. Doug and I did a blind A/B and the 192 won every time. It was a horse race. But there are certain little anomalies in SACD that don't bother most people, but have always bothered Doug. .... We then thought 24/192 should be a new hi-fi format for the audiophile community, and hopefully others."


To me, this is good news. I have not yet started downloading high-res files, but it is good to know they have the Doug Sax seal of approval.

He goes on to say that he prefers physical media, and Bluray is his preferred choice for releasing material. As far as LPs goes, he says that is his least favorite format, but if the demand is there then he might.

Ern Dog

Yeah, I read the article too and thought it was interesting.

On3s&Z3r0s

I'd be fantastic if more high-end releases would end up being 24/192 on BluRay. Then at least it should be rippable. I purchased my last SACD not long ago. I find I'm listening to the ripped redbook layer more than the SACD layer because it's so much more convenient and enjoying it just about as much. I know there are people who like the "ritual" of physical media, especially vinyl, but when it comes to digital it seems like the 24/96 and up formats are going to render SACD completely obsolete.

BlueFox

On3s&Z3r0s wrote: »

I'd be fantastic if more high-end releases would end up being 24/192 on BluRay. Then at least it should be rippable. I purchased my last SACD not long ago. I find I'm listening to the ripped redbook layer more than the SACD layer because it's so much more convenient and enjoying it just about as much. I know there are people who like the "ritual" of physical media, especially vinyl, but when it comes to digital it seems like the 24/96 and up formats are going to render SACD completely obsolete.

High-res is coming, but it is taking its time. Apple isn't helping any by not offering CD quality, or high-res files for sale, but even that will change someday. Personally, it cannot happen fast enough for me.

I'm tired of upgrading, and tweaking, my gear trying to get the last note out of a CD quality file. It is time to upgrade the source to match the gear. My two-channel, and HT, system is working great now, but I'm stuck with CD and SACD. And there is no way I will ever go back to vinyl.

You make a good point about the high-res files being copyable. I suspect that might be one reason why the music industry is moving so slow to offering this format.

I will be so happy when I can buy a Bluray audio player with stereo balanced outputs, and have a large library of music to play. The Oppo BDP-95 is a great first step, but it needs to have the video circuitry removed, and the audio circuitry tweaked even more. Add a good music server along with the Berkeley Audio Design Alpha USB to S/PDIF converter and I should be happy. At least for a little bit. :rolleyes:

schwarcw

There have been many posts since I joined here 6 years ago about SACD being a "dead" format. Yet, more and more SACDs get sold every year. Take a look at eBay and see what some of the used Mobile Fidelity SACDs are selling for? Some for more than $100. High end audio equipment manufacturers still produce high end SACD players. It's a niche, sure. To audiophiles SACD, vinyl, redbook and 24/96 are all good formats if they are recorded well. There are good and bad in all of them. Go with what you like best.

quadzilla

BlueFox wrote: »

And there is no way I will ever go back to vinyl.

I think I've found your problem....

That said, getting high-res formats is only the first part of the problem. DAC technology still has a ways to go as well in order to get a DAC that doesn't produce a metric ****-ton of odd-order harmonics for a price equal to, or lower than, that at which I can buy a really great table/catrige/pre package and get better sound than digital.

cnh

I fully agree with quadz...above. And add, if you can buy a decent laptop with a quad-core CPU for less than 1000 dollars. WHY can't we make a spectacular DAC unit for less than 500 that EQUALS any current unit of $1500-$2000? Especially considering 'where' this stuff is 'manufactured'. Does a DAC have as much 'tech' in it as a full blown laptop?

I think not? So why isn't some Chinese manufacturer producing a $400 dollar DAC that is a Giant Killer??? Is it simply about PROFIT? Everything else is being 'reverse engineered' in the 70s/80s Japanese tradition!

cnh

playback

BlueFox wrote: »

High-res is coming, but it is taking its time. Apple isn't helping any by not offering CD quality, or high-res files for sale, but even that will change someday. Personally, it cannot happen fast enough for me.

I'm tired of upgrading, and tweaking, my gear trying to get the last note out of a CD quality file. It is time to upgrade the source to match the gear. My two-channel, and HT, system is working great now, but I'm stuck with CD and SACD. And there is no way I will ever go back to vinyl.

You make a good point about the high-res files being copyable. I suspect that might be one reason why the music industry is moving so slow to offering this format.

I will be so happy when I can buy a Bluray audio player with stereo balanced outputs, and have a large library of music to play. The Oppo BDP-95 is a great first step, but it needs to have the video circuitry removed, and the audio circuitry tweaked even more. Add a good music server along with the Berkeley Audio Design Alpha USB to S/PDIF converter and I should be happy. At least for a little bit. :rolleyes:

Hi, haven't tried the 95 yet? I have well over 500 hrs on mine and its has me in disbelief at times at the multipul formats it does extremely well. Anything that the ESS Sabre dac touches is gratifying to say the least, it has to have the best channel separation Iv'e heard . When using the pure direct mode its one of the first universal players Iv'e owned that makes a very audible difference. This thing is the real deal:cool:

On3s&Z3r0s

I think as with most high-end audio you're paying for the engineering much more than the pieces and parts, and I think it matters a lot that it's a substantially different kind of engineering from what goes into a laptop. But I think that the real reason why you don't get more knockoffs is that there just isn't that much of a market there to begin with. It's kind of like Dave Wilson of Wilson Audio saying he wouldn't bother making a sub $5,000 speaker because his customers wouldn't consider buying it. Why would a Chinese company spend the resources ripping off a design in an attempt to compete in a market niche where only the best will do and the consumers who occupy that niche by and large have the resources to pay for the name-brand engineering. That said, I think most of the DACs I've bought compete favorably with equivalently priced vinyl components. (As an extreme example, find me a $150 turntable/tonearm/cartridge combo that sounds as good as a cheap HRT Music Streamer DAC.) Personally, I think this is a bit of religious issue, like tubes vs. SS, and it could be that I only know people who don't know how to put together good vinyl systems.

Regarding SACD, I think it still has some brand-name cachet with audiophiles, but I couldn't agree more that when you start talking about 24/192 PCM vs SACD all that's really gonna matter is the quality of the recording. I've got some SACDs that sound great and some that are crap, and a well recorded redbook CD sounds better. The difference is when I buy a 24/192 HDAD I can rip it to FLAC and listen to it off a file server. Since I'm chained to the physical media SACD is only marginally more convenient than vinyl.

unc2701

BlueFox wrote: »

"So for the next album I mixed, I used both Florian's 24-bit/192kHz converter and the Mietner single-bit. Doug and I did a blind A/B and the 192 won every time. It was a horse race. But there are certain little anomalies in SACD that don't bother most people, but have always bothered Doug. .... We then thought 24/192 should be a new hi-fi format for the audiophile community, and hopefully others."

I'm surprised no one is saying that the blind A/B is the problem :rolleyes:

Anyhow, a friend of mine owns a studio and we've done extensive shoot outs of the two formats and the basic problem with DSD is that if you aren't going direct to disc, any advantage it has gets lost.

Unfortunately, it generally winds up a moot point since you're lucky to find high rez recordings of most releases, let alone both a 24/192 and SACD to pick between.

heiney9

schwarcw wrote: »

To audiophiles SACD, vinyl, redbook and 24/96 are all good formats if they are recorded well. There are good and bad in all of them. Go with what you like best.

Well said Carl.

H9

heiney9

playback wrote: »

Hi, haven't tried the 95 yet? I have well over 500 hrs on mine and its has me in disbelief at times at the multipul formats it does extremely well. Anything that the ESS Sabre dac touches is gratifying to say the least, it has to have the best channel separation Iv'e heard . When using the pure direct mode its one of the first universal players Iv'e owned that makes a very audible difference. This thing is the real deal:cool:

Any of you guys thinking the Oppo players are touching the pinnacle of digital reproduction, need to rethink that and listen to some better gear. For their price point and flexibility they are a nice player, but hardly the pinnacle, or even approaching the "best" in the digital catagory.

H9

TNRabbit

heiney9 wrote: »

Any of you guys thinking the Oppo players are touching the pinnacle of digital reproduction, need to rethink that and listen to some better gear. For their price point and flexibility they are a nice player, but hardly the pinnacle, or even approaching the "best" in the digital catagory.

H9

So how about some suggestions?

nspindel

cnh wrote: »

I think not? So why isn't some Chinese manufacturer producing a $400 dollar DAC that is a Giant Killer??? Is it simply about PROFIT? Everything else is being 'reverse engineered' in the 70s/80s Japanese tradition!

cnh

$400? Total rip-off. Try $259, plus shipping from China. I owned one for two years. Great Wolfson-based DAC, sound is fantastic. Just sold it recently because I've stepped up the DAC food chain a bit. My W4S is certainly better, but for the money this is an amazing DAC:

http://littledot.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=814&sid=ad714fef4780a49958901dd6e0140e58

For a few bucks more, get the one with an integrated headphone amp:

http://littledot.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=818&sid=ad714fef4780a49958901dd6e0140e58

nspindel

cnh wrote: »

I fully agree with quadz...above. And add, if you can buy a decent laptop with a quad-core CPU for less than 1000 dollars. WHY can't we make a spectacular DAC unit for less than 500 that EQUALS any current unit of $1500-$2000? Especially considering 'where' this stuff is 'manufactured'. Does a DAC have as much 'tech' in it as a full blown laptop?
cnh

To me, the purely 'D' part of the DAC is fairly inexpensive. If you look at the price of the actual DAC chips, they're probably not very expensive at all. The W4S uses the same ESS Sabre chip as the OPPO does. The balanced design of it actually uses eight of these chips per unit. The real money is spent on the A part. This is your analog source. If you tried to build a laptop that had as high quality analog circuitry as my W4S, you wouldn't be buying it for under $1000. And even then it's not going to sound as good becuase you still have the problem of RF noise isolation. A quality DAC ought to have a superb power supply stage, top notch caps, etc. None of which is found inside a laptop. That's really the whole point of using a separate DAC, to produce the highest quality analog signal possible. And laptops aren't known for high quality analog. They can do digital real well though

F1nut

BlueFox wrote: »

On page 136 of the July/August 2011 edition of the absolute sound there is an interview with "Bill Schnee, Engineer, Producer & Founder, Bravura Records". The first question is how did he decide to go back to live-direct recording, and why did he decide on 24-bit/192kHz format.

He answers that it started a few years ago with a suggestion from Doug Sax (The Mastering Lab) to try 192kHz instead of single-bit (DSD). He says:

"So for the next album I mixed, I used both Florian's 24-bit/192kHz converter and the Mietner single-bit. Doug and I did a blind A/B and the 192 won every time. It was a horse race. But there are certain little anomalies in SACD that don't bother most people, but have always bothered Doug. .... We then thought 24/192 should be a new hi-fi format for the audiophile community, and hopefully others."


To me, this is good news. I have not yet started downloading high-res files, but it is good to know they have the Doug Sax seal of approval.

He goes on to say that he prefers physical media, and Bluray is his preferred choice for releasing material. As far as LPs goes, he says that is his least favorite format, but if the demand is there then he might.

On the other side of the coin...."Actually it [SACD] began as an in-house challenge to Sony design engineers to come up with an acoustically transparent format to preserve the aging Columbia analog master tapes since even the highest resolution of PCM left a sonic signature. They wanted a reference copy that would sound exactly like the original."

quadzilla

My point being, and this is one of the few times I'll bring up measurements as the first criteria for elimination in an audio product, but the last set of tests comparing digital systems to vinyl, it took at $10,000US DAC to get to a point where the primary form of harmonics is not odd-order. And maybe I'm just extra-sensitive to odd-order harmonics, but I always notice that I get "tired" listening to digital, whereas I can listen to analog playback for hours, and even at a higher volume. I'd love to hear a really high end digital system, but i was able to put together a pretty high end vinyl system for about 2.5k total, including a very good cartridge and phono pre. From what I understand, that's the bottom of the digital price point for a good transport and dac set up. And by good, I mean something that minimizes odd-order harmonics.

heiney9

I spent 10 hours Saturday listening to my "digital" system and not once did I get tired of it or fatigued. Digital can be done very well for a lot less than $10K, of course you can't ignore the rest of the gear in the chain or the room either. I don't have the latest and greatest (based on hype) for a digital system. What I do have has an excellent analog section as well as proper power supply.

It works extremely well and while I won't say it will best many of the multi-thousand dollar vinyl rigs many here have, I'd put it up against most multi-thousand dollar digital front ends and I'm sure it could hold it's own in most cases.

But again, we are all different in what we are trying to accomplish in our rigs. refer to Carl's excellent statement:

To audiophiles SACD, vinyl, redbook and 24/96 are all good formats if they are recorded well. There are good and bad in all of them. Go with what you like best.

H9

On3s&Z3r0s

quadzilla wrote: »

My point being, and this is one of the few times I'll bring up measurements as the first criteria for elimination in an audio product, but the last set of tests comparing digital systems to vinyl, it took at $10,000US DAC to get to a point where the primary form of harmonics is not odd-order. And maybe I'm just extra-sensitive to odd-order harmonics, but I always notice that I get "tired" listening to digital, whereas I can listen to analog playback for hours, and even at a higher volume. I'd love to hear a really high end digital system, but i was able to put together a pretty high end vinyl system for about 2.5k total, including a very good cartridge and phono pre. From what I understand, that's the bottom of the digital price point for a good transport and dac set up. And by good, I mean something that minimizes odd-order harmonics.

I've always found the harmonics issue interesting, especially since that seems to also be one of the things tube afficionados bring up a lot by way of explaining their preference. I can totally imagine some people being more attuned to that than others, like some are "supertasters" with way more tastebuds than the rest of us.

This is a pretty wild thread, all things considered... the Sony assertion that SACD is supposed to be totally transparent in a way that PCM apparently can't be versus the Doug Sax assertion that SACD actually introduces sonic anomalies. Plus Schnee expressing a preference for physical media but not vinyl... weird.

Danny Tse

F1nut wrote: »

On the other side of the coin...."Actually it [SACD] began as an in-house challenge to Sony design engineers to come up with an acoustically transparent format to preserve the aging Columbia analog master tapes since even the highest resolution of PCM left a sonic signature. They wanted a reference copy that would sound exactly like the original."

I think you're referring to DSD (Direct-Stream Digital), the encoding method behind SACD. Sony is doing exactly that with its catalog of Sony Classical and Elvis recordings, and releasing them on CD.

dkg999

I tend to pick up hybrid SACD's because generally the redbook layers are very nicely recorded and I can tell a difference with the std redbook CD's I also have. My CA 650 BDP handles SACD, however it's in my HT system and I don't have it connected into the 2 ch system. I just haven't heard enough difference between the SACD 2 ch and redbook 2 ch from the hybrid SACD's to make it worthwhile to have SACD in my 2 ch.

I think within 5 yrs we will have an emerging winner in the hi-res audio formats. I just hope it doesn't come with an elimination of the physical media.

playback

heiney9 wrote: »

Any of you guys thinking the Oppo players are touching the pinnacle of digital reproduction, need to rethink that and listen to some better gear. For their price point and flexibility they are a nice player, but hardly the pinnacle, or even approaching the "best" in the digital catagory.

H9

NO piece of audiophile gear comes close to touching the pinnacle of there respective category. Don't get me wrong there are some that reach higher than others. Iv'e heard better gear:rolleyes: and the Oppo 95 is better gear:biggrin:

BlueFox

On3s&Z3r0s wrote: »

Plus Schnee expressing a preference for physical media but not vinyl... weird.

I interpreted that as he likes, as does many people, to have a physical copy of the files, not just the same file on a hard drive. Since he is interested in the best sound, then obviously vinyl would be behind 24/192, and SACD.

heiney9

playback wrote: »

NO piece of audiophile gear comes close to touching the pinnacle of there respective category.

Don't be ridiculous.....I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

playback wrote: »

Don't get me wrong there are some that reach higher than others. Iv'e heard better gear:rolleyes: and the Oppo 95 is better gear:biggrin:

If the Oppo is best gear you've heard, I'd get out there and listen to more gear :rolleyes:

H9

playback

heiney9 wrote: »

Don't be ridiculous.....I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
Agreed


If the Oppo is best gear you've heard, I'd get out there and listen to more gear :rolleyes:

H9

What would you suggest? Once again I'm not saying it's the best! But if this is just run of the mill sound then I'm glad my tolerance for what I consider good sound is so low:rolleyes: I guess I need to spend more:eek: as you obviously did to obtain the level of performance that would meet your standard of good sound. Mabe you should just try a 95 for yourself, that way you can spend more time listening and not having to get out so much to hear better gear:biggrin:

steveinaz

IMO, the pinnacle of digital gear falls off much quicker (in terms of bang for your buck) than the necessary amplification and speaker setups needed to exploit their (even modest equipments) strengths.

playback

steveinaz wrote: »

IMO, the pinnacle of digital gear falls off much quicker (in terms of bang for your buck) than the necessary amplification and speaker setups needed to exploit their (even modest equipments) strengths.

Agreed, no point in having hi resolution potential without the supporting cast there to sing along with it! Digital sources come and go, sometimes from reliability issues and sometimes compatibility. This is rarely the issue with speakers , amps and preamps unless the upgrade bug gets ya!

megasat16

Post made by errknnm1 reported for SPAM.

steveinaz

My other point is, the subtleties that occur beyond, say, a $2500 digital front-end are so minute as to almost be a waste of time (and money) when other components could do far more for the money.

Of course, if you have money falling out of hind-quarters, then disregard; but I'd say the above statement applies for 99.5% of the Polk Forum membership.

Face

heiney9 wrote: »

Any of you guys thinking the Oppo players are touching the pinnacle of digital reproduction, need to rethink that and listen to some better gear. For their price point and flexibility they are a nice player, but hardly the pinnacle, or even approaching the "best" in the digital catagory.

H9

You may be surprised, on another board someone compared Oppo's TOTL player to Mac's TOTL player. To his ears, the players sounded very similar, with the Mac just sounding a little better. As always, I have too many irons in the fire, otherwise I'd pick one up to use as a transport and for comparison's sake.

steveinaz

I think people waste far too much time and money phutzing around with sources and "accessories" that would be far better used on speakers and amplification.